Traditional techniques for providing on-line electronic payment transactions include a web-based form (e.g., an HTML form) in which a user can enter information about the user and an article being purchased, such as product identifiers, etc. Also, such web-based forms enable a user to enter financially-related data into another form. For securing financially-sensitive data payments, various organizations and/or companies in the payment card industry have established card security policies, procedures and guidelines. There exists a number of conventional approaches to safeguarding data used in on-line electronic payments. While functional, there is a variety of drawbacks associated with the conventional approaches to using data in typical on-line electronic payment transactions.
Some conventional approaches to make on-line electronic payments may commingle non-financial information (e.g., “out-of-scope” information) and financial information (e.g., “in-scope” information). In some cases, both types of information are stored in a common storage platform and are equally accessible. Thus, some consumers of the non-financial information may have access unnecessarily to the financial information, thereby increasing opportunities of unauthorized data access.
In other approaches, a user is presented one or more merchant-related web pages to peruse potential purchases and input user-related data in on-line web forms. But when the user is to make payment, the user may be directed to another web page typically controlled by a third party that provides payment services. The transition to another uniform resource locator (“URL”) of another web page to facilitate payment (i.e., a transition away from an on-line merchant checkout page) causes a back-and-forth experience by the user when making payments conventionally. For example, a payment processes usually requires that the user interact with two or more windows, which interrupts the user experience during purchasing goods or services. Users also experience numerous visual transitions, disruptions and delays in the process of making payment. It is also expected that, after each stage, some users decide not to continue with the relatively cumbersome payment process, resulting in the loss of potential customers or customers and less favorable conversions.
In view of the foregoing, it is be desirable to provide an apparatus, a system, and a method for overcoming the drawbacks of the conventional on-line electronic payment processes.
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